The Last American Vagabond - Cory Hughes Interview - The Independent Media Token

Episode Date: August 21, 2025

Joining me today is Cory Hughes, here to discuss his new project that aims to fund those in the independent media, called the "Independent Media Token (IMT)". Most are aware of just how difficult it can be to successfully run a truly independent media platform, let alone do so in a way considered to be financially successful. Cory has created IMT in order to fill a much needed financial gap in the independent media field -- a gap that currently sees only the largest platforms, and those most willing to pull political punches when asked, gaining all the resources. Today we discuss what IMT can do to change this entirely manufactured financial choke point, and what you can do to support it.Source Links:Cory HughesA Warning From History: Hughes, Cory: 9798223339434: Amazon.com: Books(14) Cory Hughes Bloody History (@BloodyHistory63) / XCory Huges Interview - Was Israel Behind The Assassination Of JFK?Independent Media TokenBitcoin Donations Are Appreciated:www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/bitcoin-donation(3FSozj9gQ1UniHvEiRmkPnXzHSVMc68U9f)The Last American Vagabond Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The Last American Vagabond Substack at tlavagabond.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to The Last American Vagabond. Joining me today is Corey Hughes, researcher, author, and now crypto entrepreneur. I'll let him describe what he wants to call his new venture. I'm very excited about where this is going. I'm involved with it myself here to discuss this, a new idea around a crypto token that's meant to provide grants for independent media. Corey, how are you today? Good to have you on the show, brother. Hey, thank you for having me.

What would you call that? What would you call the new venture, you know, how would you frame the name for what this is from your perspective? Sure. So I kind of feel like we're taking things back to the old school. And what we've done fundamentally is we have launched what people called back in the day a utility token. Meaning for a while, a lot of tokens were coming out. They really didn't have much of a purpose. They didn't do anything. But tokens that did something and had an actual functionality were called utility tokens. But you haven't heard much about that in many, many years. And I think that's kind of what we did. So fundamentally, we launched what's called independent media token.

And I have to, I got to admit, part of the inspiration for this was you, because I remember a year and a half, maybe two years ago, you were having, at the same time, you were getting sued. The IRS was coming after you. It's still happening. Still happening. Oh, my God. So, I mean, I just remember being like in awe that they were going after you at all. And that kind of got the ball rolling with ideas. and it really took us over a year of brainstorming to finalize what we've done. Outstanding.

Well, before we get into all this, that makes me, that's awesome, man. I didn't know that. That's really, really cool to hear. But so before we get into the project, I want to make sure you have a chance to, for those that may not have seen you, our previous interview, by the way, which I'll include, which I think is important because he's prolific. You know, not one of the leading, you can describe it, researchers in regard to JFK and a lot of different conversations. Go ahead and introduce yourself and, you know, what your background

and what you're doing. And sure, you know, before we get to the crypto stuff, I, the reason I said at the start was like, I called you a crypto entrepreneur. I didn't know if that is that the right way to frame now. I don't like that word. I've never liked that word. It's probably one of the most pretentious words I've ever heard in my own. I'm just a guy trying to get by in this world, you know. Right, right. But my name's Corey Hughes. I'm a historian that focuses on the Kennedy assassination. I've been on Kennedy over seven years full time. I got two books out. And That's my whole life. I've been in independent media since 2014.

I actually launched a podcast for Anonymous in 2014 that I did for about two years. And that kind of got me into my main work of Kennedy and I studied the Holocaust and World War II and all that stuff. But I've been doing this a long time. And guess what? Everybody I know in independent media is broke. I hate to say it, but it's true. And so I wanted to come up with an idea that could help foster. growth in independent media.

And then that's how we came up with independent media token because we saw a real need. You know, I wanted to reach out and help you at the time when you were having your problems. And I saw and I, but who has money? You know what I mean? It's hard. And so the concept was basically to find a way to raise money for new shows, growing shows, individual projects, grants. And we're even talking about a potential legal fund.

So yeah, there's a lot of potentiality in what we're doing. And I'm pretty excited about it because no one's ever done anything like it before. We kind of like to think that we're something brand new that we're calling a philanthropic coin because nobody else is doing anything like that where we're taking a percentage of transactions that go directly to our philanthropic endeavor, you know? Right, right. I like that. I mean, see, this is what's so interesting.

And I want to get into the rightful concerns people may have around crypto in a minute, but it's like it's interesting that there are directions that are being taken. through this that are at least, and again, I don't actually know of any of the projects like what you're doing, but maybe you'll set this kind of pattern for other people to follow or the, you know, got the path, but I think it's really important to look at this in a way that can be done that's not necessarily like, it's done in a way that is philanthropic. You're doing this to support other people. And if that ends up benefiting those that started, then all the better, you know, but let's start from the beginning of this. So explain what the token is in maybe the compare.

many people are still learning the difference between tokens themselves. You know, that not all Bitcoin or not all cryptocurrency is Bitcoin, vice versa. There's a lot to it. I recommend James Corbett work on that that really, he has some old shows where he really breaks down those differences. But take in a comparison to something like a, you know, in one case, like a Bitcoin or something else like maybe like a chain link, you know, what is this token first? And like, how does that fit into this ecosystem?

All right. So initially you had Bitcoin. It was the only crypto, right? It was created by Satoshi. Nakamoto. We could talk about him later on. But fundamentally, Bitcoin was the product of a decade's worth of work, realistically speaking. And it incorporated things like the proof of work algorithm from Adam back. And it took all the concepts that people had been discussing and made it real. And it was absolutely incredible. So for the first couple of years after Bitcoin came out,

every single coin that was released, Dogecoin and, you know, there was a whole bunch of other ones. pre-Etherium that their own blockchain. And very soon they came to realize that maintaining individual blockchains in a decentralized manner is virtually impossible because you've got to get people on board and you've got to have people on running nodes. And it's such a massive

undertaking that Vitalik came up with Ethereum, which was basically a decentralized functioning platform that allowed you to create a token on the back end using their decentralized network and not have to create your own network, right? It's a double-edged sword, Ethereum and these platforms. Ultimately, it took many, many years for, I think, for them to kind of solidify

and they are today and to be able to utilize the functionality that we're particularly using. But initially, it opened the floodgates to scams. And that's why a lot of people have a bad taste in their mouth with crypto, because to the blockchain, expense it virtually impossible to do, unless you have massive backing and a ton of people involved. But you can launch a token on Ethereum's network. you know, to do what you want to do without having to have all that massive infrastructure cost. So the evolution from there, you have a layer one like Bitcoin.

Then you have a layer one like Ethereum. And then on top of Ethereum, you build all these other layers, right, through the different tokens. All the problems in Ethereum and Solana came about. And the technicals behind Solana are absolutely unbelievable. fundamentally it can process multiple blocks at a time compared to any other blockchain. It's really kind of an amazing system designed by X Oracle people. But it's a centralized system. I'm not going to lie.

The more further away we get from Bitcoin with all these tokens and coins and projects, the further away from decentralization that we get. That's just a reality. And so that kind of works for me because I don't really think that there's competition for Bitcoin. in as far as using it as a currency. I mean, the whole package is Bitcoin. It kind of solved the money problem. So in my opinion, I believe that these tokens should have utility.

They should function more like a stock with some sort of extra feature. And that's exactly what we did. So the value of a stock is based on anticipation of what the company is going to do in the future, if they're going to make a ton of money for their shareholders and whatnot. So speculative trading on stocks is what drives. price up, right, because of what the company is doing. But none of these tokens really do anything. Like when you buy, you know, Shiba Inu, it doesn't do anything.

It just is what it is. And you buy it based 100% purely on speculation, not because of potential future endeavors that they're going to be doing or growth in the company, right? We are completely different because when people buy into independent media token, basically that kind of serves as the base layer of our, ability to fund these projects, right? And so it gives us a great amount of utility that we can then refocus into the independent media space, which is phenomenal. It actually does something, and it benefits a lot of people. And not only that, the people who buy it will benefit also.

And they don't have to stop what they're doing to make donations to individual shows. They like, they don't have to do any of us up. We have a 1% tax on all the transactions, which means that 1% comes back to us, and that creates the fund, we're then going to use to further finance these projects. And we're talking, we'll get to it more in grants, right? So the idea being the money then gets, you know, used to give grants that, you know, for those that don't know, means they don't have to pay anything back. It's just free money given to people in the independent media that will be decided by a board,

which I'll be a part of. Right. Right. So it's a really interesting idea. So we go more into that, that for those that may still be kind of not sure about the point of, you know, the differences, you know, one, an easy way to look at it. So Bitcoin Ethereum are arguably and considered currency. Like so you could use this as exchange currency.

Now what's interesting is even the ones you pointed to, you can still arguably use them as some form of currency because they have value, right? But there's not something, or the difference is a Bitcoin is not a product. It is the currency, but something like a chain link. Same idea. It can still be exchanged to currency, but there's a product behind it. Right. There's something that's being used that can be sold and grown and developed and that would cause

it to go up, not just the use of it. And so that's, so this would be a different thing entirely, right? Where it's about something that is creating a store of value that then gets used to help independent media grow. But at the same time, you could still gain by simply owning it and having that go up and right. Correct. And so it is a challenge because of what's happened over the last couple of years.

So the reason that all the meme coins popped up on the salon, we used Salana because we looked at architecture and the ability. ability to scale long term. And we felt that Solana is in the best position to do that. The problem, though, it's double, you know, it's always a double edge sword. The amount of money it costs to actually launch a token on Solana is so low. The blockchain is so efficient that literally you could launch a coin for like 100 bucks. Okay. And so what did that do? That opened the floodgates to people coming up with Joe Schmo coin and all these things. And it's kind of crazy because the meme coin world has done a couple things inadvertently.

It brought a bunch of people into crypto who never would have been in crypto because they think they can make some quick money. And unfortunately, the system is showing that that's possible. Right. But all these people who are buying into this Solana ecosystem, I don't really know that they're seeing the long-term value in things. And that's another issue with independent media token. We're not a quick flip at all.

Right. So we studied the market, the Solana market on how to get into the Solana market. on how to get into the Salana market and how to get things moving in the Salana market and we became somewhat experts on the process of how to launch a token on Salana. But then we very quickly realized over the last couple weeks

that that ecosystem and what we're doing are very different. We're using an incredible ecosystem, but nobody has ever seen a valid project on Salana with the exception of the exchange tokens because the exchange tokens need them to facilitate their exchanges. But there are no other legitimate projects even attempting to launch on Solana, which I think is going to really set us apart once people realize what we're doing. Right.

But another thing is that when looking at crypto style marketing for this ecosystem, we realize really quickly that it's mostly fake. Most of this, most of the volume that you see on Solana and a lot of these meme coins like on base or some of these other new chains are popping up, this is smoke and mirrors. This is all bot volume. It is all, you know, bot followers on Twitter. It's they give this fake appearance that they have a big project. And then that tricks people into buying in. And then it becomes a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Right. So you got people out there launching coins that do nothing, spending $20, $40, $50,000 to get off the ground and roping people in. And they're all using volume bots. They're using, you know, Twitter bots, everything. We're not doing that. We made the decision. Once we came to understand that was what was going on,

and how the vast majority of volume that we're seeing is fake, we're like, we're not going to do that. And if it takes us five years to get organic volume, that's what we're going to do. We're not going to waste our time with this BS. Right. And this is a good example of in any field,

whether independent media or, you know, whatever we're talking about, that in this moment, you could have chosen to do the wrong thing, even for the right reasons. You know, been like, well,

that's the way this system works, even though it's dishonest. Maybe we can get there and then use it for good, right? The same logic people convince themselves of going into politics. The point is, you're still doing something wrong, right? And so I give you a lot of credit for choosing the difficult path because it's the right

thing to do. And I think that's important to point out. Yeah, a lot of things that we anticipated when we started, we realized after we did them, oh, we probably shouldn't have done that. Like the manner in which we launched the LP is totally fine. Everything's working great. But we don't make any money on fees like everyone else does because we did it a legitimate way as opposed to a non-legitimate way.

So let me explain this really quick. So when people launch like this meme tokens, they will immediately take their LP token. So if you launch an LP, a liquidity pool, that means you put up, say, a bunch of Solana on one side, and then a bunch of your token on the other side, you create the trading pool that people will then buy your token out of, right? Once you create that, you are given what's called LP tokens, which are generated on the spot, which is your claim to the liquidity pool. So you can own that liquidity pool, right?

So the vast majority of people who put out these meme tokens, they take this liquidity pool tokens and then they burn them through radium and that allows them to collect fees. But they burnt the liquidity pool tokens, which means nobody can ever access that LP ever, right? So if that LP grows to $5 million, it doesn't matter. Nobody can ever access that LP for future growth. This is what all of the meme coin tokens do. They burn their LPs. And this to me is the sign of a short. short-sighted project that's not planning on being around long-term because we decided not to

burn our LP tokens. And therefore, we have the ability to move tokens around to other exchanges in the future as we grow as opposed to shoehorning ourselves into burning our tokens. And therefore, the project would have been fundamentally locked forever. So what's the bent? Oh, sorry, which what? We would have been locked forever. So if you create an LP and you burn your tokens, it's inaccessible. So you could end up having an LP with $5 million in it.

no one's ever going to be able to access. Right. What's going to ask is that, so what's the benefit of these groups doing that? Okay. So when you burn your tokens through radium, that allows you to collect a 0.252 feet in Solana for every transaction, right? So they're screwing their long term potential growth and change for immediate benefits. Yes. Yeah, I get it.

You nailed it. They're screwing themselves long term for short term gain. Which means they don't plan long term. Correct. Pump and dump style. Correct. And so we didn't do that. We made the decision not to do that and to forego any fee money that we would make on the trading because we believe in the token itself. We believe in the project itself and we have no doubts whatsoever. In the next two years, we're pretty much

convinced we're going to hit around a $10 million market cap. And today, today we're sitting at about a $55,000 market cap. So we anticipate 100x in value in the next two years. Nice. Yeah. And that's based on just simply looking at market trends, looking at our ability to do marketing and a whole number of other factors. But we think that's a very reasonable number. 10 million really still keeps us off the radar. And it gives us a 10 million market cap would give us around a million dollars a year to distribute for independent media projects.

That's outstanding. And see, my mindset is always, I'm sure you know within this or anything, any project. And I know it's in a weird, in a way, it's counterintuitive. Marketing and all that is an unfortunate, necessary part of everything we see. seem to be involved. I know. I hate it, though. And maybe my audience knows. I'm like, it seems like a, you know, it's just like a dirty word to me. I hate, I hate the idea of selling yourself, but it is necessary. My point, though, is that, you know, in this, what was I going to say? I just lost my train of thought. But the, the, you were saying something about the marketing.

I just lost it. Yeah, the marketing is, the marketing in crypto is, I can't believe how fake it is. Now, here's one thing that we really realize is that, so there's certain channels that you go through that people who trade these kind of Salana, you know, mean coin kind of things look for, right? They look for if you have burnt your LP, they look for if you do this. There's a whole checklist of things that they look for. So we look into that checklist and doing that checklist. And we realize that that in and of itself keeps the market small. And if you're only doing specific marketing through these very specific channels that very specific people look for,

you're shutting yourself off to the much wider world. And so we decided we're not going to do this typical crypto marketing. We're going to focus on the larger scale platforms that everyone's on like X and like Facebook and the traditional stuff because then we have access to marketing in front of a much larger audience than if we limit ourselves just to the small number of crypto marketing places where everyone expects you to market. Right. That makes sense. We're taking a much more traditional approach to everything as opposed to a crypto approach, really, which sounds kind of counterintuitive. But it's necessary. Yeah. This is what I mean is, and I remember what I was going to say is that. like I come, I tend to come in everything I do for much more of this, you know,

if you build it, they will come kind of a mindset. Right. Right thing for the right reasons. And, you know, I am of the mind that most people are not just wanting that, but thirsty for it with the way the world is today. But so that's the idea is like, you know, you're building something that is going to show value because, you know, like, so ultimately at its end result, I argue without marketing at all, like once it becomes a discussion point in independent media, that this new

token just literally handed a $10,000 free grant to a media person. That's going to, that is in and of itself going to build. Like, that's my point. Right. Wow, that's something that I want to support. The end product is the best marketing we could ever do. And that we, that I think is what's really going to set us apart. And here's another thing.

Here's the thing that sets us apart. You guys are looking at my face right now and you guys all know my name and how to get a hold of me. Right. There ain't no, there's no shadiness going on here. And that's what everyone's afraid of. You know what I mean? Yeah.

Well, go ahead. Go ahead. The fact that so many people are putting huge amounts of money into projects that they have no idea who's behind the project is insane. I sat up the other night. And so I talked about that checklist of things you're supposed to do to get people wanting to get into your token. And right. And so I go to deck screener all the time. and I'm constantly looking at tokens to see which ones are doing the checklist.

How successful are they and this and that? And people have learned how to do the checklist to make it look legit and then still rug you. I watched one the other day. I watched one for a couple hours, go up like four or five times in value. Everything looked legit on the up and up as per those meme coin standards, right? And then boom, whole project, $2 million rugged in an instant. It was wild. That's the second rug that I've seen in two weeks.

Like in real time, I just click it and I watch. and then boom there it goes right so these things are happening all the time and there's no recourse now that trump say trump is a double-edged sword again like everything else he he does good stuff and he does stuff that totally makes me want to just pull the hairs out of my head and so um oh shit man i just totally lost my train i thought too um it's contagious trump's this whole let me kind of on something different this this whole recent push right i think is it is more smoking mirrors uh this whole government's getting involved hedge funds are getting involved, all this stuff. Bitcoin's going to 10 million, right? I 100% believe Bitcoin's going to

$10 million. It's inevitable because of the core functionality of what Bitcoin is and what it does. Bitcoin, I can send you a transaction without government permission. That's it. That's the whole purpose of Bitcoin. For now, anyway, it seems. Well, they'd have to change the underlying code. And in order to do that, you've got to compromise the nodes. Yeah. And if nodes are being run by diehard, diehard Bitcoiners, I don't think they're going to be able to be successful in that, in that arena. But I don't think we're going to this million dollar Bitcoin anytime soon. What I've seen is BlackRock and all these other companies have been buying Bitcoin like billions upon billions upon billions.

And what is it done to the market cap? Nothing. Nothing. They've been buying over the counter at set prices that don't affect market value. Okay. And how many is BlackRock got? They got like 700,000 Bitcoin. Okay.

There ain't much room for them to get much more. There is not much. The people who were looking to buy Bitcoin that we've been hearing about, yeah, they got their Bitcoin. We heard about it after the fact. Yeah. And the price didn't go anywhere, right? Can you explain that? Yeah.

So when you buy over the counter, you have your standard, you know, you have your standard liquidity pools, people can buy from. You have your centralized exchanges where people can sell. But I'm sorry, can you repeat a question again? I'd also have a train of thought. Well, no, just the idea of the mechanism you just highlighted there, you know, explaining. the, I mean, I can't, that's why I was explanation on it. Like the, the, I can't, I can't, I talk back you. I'm sorry, but it's like the, the mechanism you just described there about the money and the overlapping point of how it's made. Right. So the over the counter, when you buy over the counter, it doesn't

affect the market. So you have markets. The changing of the, yeah. Right. And so, but there are people who call up Coinbase. And they're like, look, I got, I want to buy a 500 million in Bitcoin. Right. And they got other people on the other end who like, I got that to sell. Those are not going through the exchanges that change the price, right? They go over the counter at the current price in bulk. So you're going to buy half a billion dollars in Bitcoin at a fixed price. Not like if you were to buy it on an exchange that would drive the price up.

So all these institutions are buying over the counter. So my question, why are they doing that? And what's their, like, so are they, what's their interest in not affecting the price? Okay. Well, why they want to not affect the price obviously is so they can buy it. the low price. But when they buy over the counter, the sheer volume of Bitcoin that they would buy at one time necessitates it can't go through the market because it's too much. It would radically change the market. Radically. So what do they do? They just find buyers and sellers that they coordinate

off the market to sell at fixed prices. And that's kind of how you have to operate if you're buying mass sums like that. But it's screwed everybody else who's holding. If those guys that would have bought all those Bitcoin on the open market, we'd be looking at the million plus Bitcoin right now. Yeah. See, that's very deceptive, right? Because obviously they want that to happen when they're in their position to gain from it. Right. Right.

And this right now, over the past day or two, we're seeing a $300 million ETF liquidation. So it's another thing. The ETFs had a fair role in driving the price to $100,000, you know, from 50, 60 or whatever. But ultimately, they don't see Bitcoin as I do. Okay, they don't see Bitcoin as being a ramp off of the fiat system. They don't, they don't see it like that. To them, it's just another asset that they're going to buy and sell to make money on. That's how it frames it today.

That's kind of the deviation from the Trump administration is to almost co-opt that as opposed to allow it to change the system. They want to bolster the system with it. Well, here's the thing. Satoshi anticipated all of this. Like there's nothing that's happening with governments or with ETFs or any of this that he didn't anticipate. and he kind of anticipated that in order for it to even get to the value of a million dollars plus or whatever, that it would need to be able to pull like half the world out of poverty or whatever, you kind of needed that kind of institutional money to drive it there in the first place.

Like, Satoshi was not an idiot. He anticipated all this. But argue what the debate becomes whether or not, whether he was aware of that almost inevitability, that would what he would want it to become based on the original ideas, right? Like it's almost that, you know, it was not meant to be a holding start. or a value, but rather a currency that could circumvent the system. But we could go in, this is a whole conversation, you know. Right.

People say that, but people say that, but here's the thing. That doesn't. I'm not saying that's what the case is, but that's one of the perceptions on, you know, so it's debated, obviously. But it's, it's interesting to think about because ultimately what it, the original idea does seem to be set up in a way that is more about, you know, undermining the current financial system as opposed to making it. I think that's clearly going away from that.

And you know, but like I said, last time we talked about this, I think it was and wake up, you know, maybe that's what Satoshi if he was here in the conversation would argue is what should be happening now. I don't know. But it's just I just, as you know where I come from, I'm very always of the government and what they're doing. I'm worried about that direction, you know. Right.

Well, so Satoshi envisioned Bitcoin as being a self member, imagine it as a financial ecosystem that you didn't need off ramps because everyone was just using Bitcoin, right? Right. That was how he envisioned. that's not going to ever happen. I'm sorry. Like what percentage of people own gold? Like five?

Yeah, right. But the point is that we should still, whether or not it seems inevitable or not, is there something that people wanted to fight for. And the argument is that's what is not happening now. And that's where that kind of feeling comes from. Right.

I'm sure you understand. So there's a major contradiction in, this might just be my opinion, but this is what I've seen over and over again. If I have something that's going to be worth more money tomorrow, I'm not going to want to spend it today. I would never, in 1985, I wouldn't go buy a cup of coffee with Microsoft stock. You know, it'd be ridiculous.

That same sentiment will hold true for Bitcoin forever, okay? It will always be worth more tomorrow, you know, euphemistically speaking. Therefore, why would anyone ever want to spend it? If you're going to spend, if you want to spend crypto in an anonymous fashion, and you want to be able to do it without having to worry about your asset going up or down in bed, then we're back to talking about stable coins. And that's a whole other conversation. Why would you use a stable coin if you can use cash, right? Well, there's that week that I want to stick to your project,

but there's a whole, because I'll, we can go into this. Right, right. You know, there's so many interesting overlaps to it. But I mean, it always comes back to personal freedom, liberty, circus, you know, personal privacy, you know, and there's very clear differentiations between all of these things from a Minero to a Bitcoin to a stable coin, And the way it's all going feels, you know, to a lot of people's perspective to be a deviation from what the idea of this. Right.

It was. So that's what kind of drives this, right? So it's, but you have a comment on that and let's go back to a. Yeah. My comment is no matter, I don't care what anyone does with Bitcoin. The fundamentals have never changed. And the fundamentals are better than ever. We've got now, we've got segregated witness.

We have tap route, which is going to be the gateway to more privacy and transactions. Like the core developers are no slouches. And they're well aware of government co-opting. And I am not, I'm not worried about it at all. Satoshi laid the foundation that would not allow it to be ultimately changed by anyone but the users, aka the node runners. And I don't co-opting the tens of thousands of node runners out there. We had two former attempts to hijack the Bitcoin blockchain from Roger Veer with Bitcoin Cash

and then with the guys at BitPay with Segwit 2X. Those were outright hijack attempts. Again, though, we talked about this last time. And, you know, I, it can be framed different ways, right? And so I brought up the different, the perspective that that's the work was, you know, that the original white paper aligns with today BSV more than anything. But again, you know, these are weirdly contentious conversation. Right, right.

It's, but it's important to look at. I've done many interviews with, you know, one with Mark Goodwin, one, you know, about this very topic. But, you know, and they're worth your investigation, right? But the, the direction going forward, though. So now you're, you're using this ecosystem in a way to, create something that is a different. You're not trying to enrich yourself. You're not trying to, you know, do a pump and dump.

You know, it's about doing it the hard way, the right way to build something that can stay there and last and benefit people who are involved in a way well beyond just making profit. So how does that ecosystem work? So somebody wants to go buy some of this token, which you said is now available. People can buy it, right? So they want to buy some of this token. They can hold it.

You know, so how is the rest of it going to work? Like, do they, are they involved with this process? Like how does this ultimately break down the way that it's going to go? Sure. So this is one problem that we have with all crypto, even Bitcoin in general, is that for the average Joe Schmo, the barriers to entry are daunting. They're somewhat complicated, right? If you want to buy Bitcoin, you have to go to a website and buy it,

whether it's Coinbase or some of the no KYC places that you can get Bitcoin. But that's step number one, right? You have to go and you have to get Bitcoin. And then that Bitcoin has to turn into Solana, right? And then that Solana you can use to purchase IMT, right? So this is one thing that is, I think, one of the weakest points of crypto that really, if the Vitalik, well, that wasn't really Vitalik. Vitalik transformed fees on a network into something called gas and required a separate token.

That's why we have Ethereum. Ethereum is basically just gas. It's gas for your car. And the tokens on the back need Ethereum to send, right? So when you start getting into these other tokens, other tokens, it gets kind of complicated to where it's going to wash out like 70% of the mass population. I mean, that's just a reality we have to deal with. They haven't found a way to simplify it. One quick point. It's interesting to me. I don't see how this is any more complicated

than the numbers on your checkbook. You know what I mean? Like it's like, and yeah, we're at a point now where that's, you don't memorize those things. It's pretty automated, but move you to maybe know them in case there's, you know, so it's the same kind of idea. There, it's, it's a same kind of idea. even like, and I'm not promoting Coinbase, but there are like that that make it, you know, click and push and super simple, you know, so it's this weird like a version, a version to what is actually no less complicated than anything else we use, like just having that, that string of the, you know, the hash and memorizing it or copying it or saving it somewhere and posting it. You know, so I think it's more of a mental block.

You are correct. A hundred percent. Is it the complicated part about it is changing the way we think. And anytime we're exposed to something new, you know what I mean? it's it's always an obstacle for people to get into anything new. I remember when I got into crypto, I was so scared of sending transactions. Me too. I would like do, I would do like three tests and then I would send it. And now I'd be like, is it going to go there? And then I'd be waiting and waiting and waiting for the confirmation.

But like, okay, it worked. And now it is, now I know it works. 10 years later, I'm like, oh, it works. Right. I don't have to worry about it anymore. But even someone who was enthusiastic about the space. And my experience in the space goes back a long time. I bought my first bitcoins at $575 in 2016, I believe.

And by the end of 2016, I launched what at the time had become the world's largest Bitcoin podcast network. And I had over 30 Bitcoin podcasts by the end of 2016. There, I went to go work for Safedin Amos, who wrote the Bitcoin Standard. I was his basically personal assistant and webmaster for about two and a half years before he hit it big. Nice. And so, yeah, my background in crypto is pretty extensive.

And I know a ton of people in the Bitcoin space. And so one thing that I really have to harp on is the anonymity of these tokens, right? In regard to the independent media token. Well, in regards to that compared to the other tokens out there in the space, right? You can't be buying into anything that you don't know who's running it. Right. You can't. I'm sorry.

You just can't. I mean, you might get lucky. If you buy a token and it goes to a million bucks and you may get it. a ton of money and you don't know who ran the project, you got lucky. That's all there is to it. You're not a master trader, right? I think the most important thing moving forward, and I think that we're going to see a lot more of this in the next couple of years, we're going to see more not anonymous projects. We're going to see legitimate projects rise out of this space. That is, for the most part, been nothing but memes. One of the thing that's been great about the meme space on

Solana is that it has shown Solana can handle absolutely immense volumes and, you know, transactional that's through the roof. It's the most active chain of any chain. Even if the project's on it are junk, it doesn't matter because it's showing that the infrastructure itself can handle anything you throw at it, which it can. Well, so back back to the process. So, you know, in, in regard to walk me through how this becomes, you know, from somebody buying the token to then ending up to a grant to a new independent media person. Sure. To simplify the whole process, let's say you just You go right and buy Solana. You can buy Salana directly.

You don't have to buy Bitcoin first. Go to Coinbase or wherever you buy your coins at. There's a couple different Solana wallets that you can do, swaps in and stuff. I've been recommending for everyone, Phantom Wallet, because it's a pretty, it's been around a long time and it's solid and it works. So once you have Solana in your Phantom wallet, you just hit swap. And if you go into search, you put IMT. It'll bring up our token. You can see it.

We have, our logo is the red circle with the white eye in it. And that's it. Hit swap and it's that simple. So people who are familiar with the ecosystem know how this process works. And if you're not, the basic first steps to take, set up an account somewhere where you can buy cryptocurrency. Like a centralized exchange or coin base or something like that. And then from there, Solana can easily be swapped into IMT. Okay.

And so then from there, now now that's. that's created more, you know, funds. So then how does that then end up in the hands of an independent media personality that All right. So let's say you buy $100 worth of Solana and then you swap that for independent media token. Okay. You will only receive $99 of IMT and we will receive $1 of IMT.

So every time a transaction happens, 1% comes back to us. that goes into the fund and that perpetuates the growth of the fund. Now, one thing we're having a hard time gauging, which we figure we'll have this worked out in the next couple months, we're having a hard time gauging how many tokens will be returned to us on a regular basis. Because we don't have any volume. I'll be straight up because we're not playing the bot game. People don't know about us.

We're brand new. Our volume is terrible. Okay. It needs to improve. So that being said, Um, well, I, what, the direction I was kind of going in is, is the, you know, the money that, that, that was clear. So the one dollar of all of it goes into the fund, right? So then walk me through how that process. Like so the board involved, like how, how does that end up going through the process and end up in, you know, some new independent media that, you know, that ends up being deserving of it? So our goal is, and we have set, we have already released. into we already have set aside in our distribution schedule because we're not releasing all the tokens at once we're spreading out like a hundred million a month give or take until around

February or March of next year right so they're not being all dumped on the market but we have we're planning on having 25 million tokens per quarter or a hundred million tokens per year to distribute that's our goal we're not sure exactly what the volume is going to allow for but that's kind of anticipated and we currently have two years worth of distribution schedule already set aside regardless of anything else that happens. So the idea is that let's say we have 25 million tokens. Well, for the first two distributions we're doing, September 1st is going to be the first set of distributions.

And actually we're stretching it out over 90 days. We're not doing all the tokens on day one. We're stretching out that distribution over the 90 day period. After that, we're kind of looking to move away from general distributions in a large scale, meaning if we pick up a new media partner, they're going to get a middle. million tokens. That's kind of the incentive at the moment to come on board. But we are really looking to fund individual specific projects. And this is where the board comes in. We're going to need people to help decide. We're looking to have applications come in. Hey, I'm trying to make a documentary.

I need $25,000. Right. Okay. We get the application. You know, we review it. And then as the board, and there's going to be an aspect of the community input also. We're trying to get, we're trying to figure out how to get community input. But all the channels of community input that I've already talked about like through Telegram and X and all this stuff are very, they kind of suck. And it's a lot of bots. And so we're not sure exactly how we're going to go about receiving community input other than maybe get an email. We're going to have to figure out a system. But we want to get community input and board input and then we'll decide on how the money gets distributed. So. Right. And so essentially it'll be that, you know, it'll be a board decision based on who we think is most

deserving of the grant and then that money gets decided to give to them. Nothing. Then from there, they do what they want with it. Right. Exactly. And so basically the more that people buy into the project, right? So just average buying it solar on platform builds that fund, which then will, as that grows, gets distributed as the board decides.

Exactly. Interesting. Yeah. So is it beyond that mechanism, do you? have any envision for this growing beyond that and other aspects of, you know, any other applications you see beyond that? You know, we're not sure yet. We're really interested in having part of this go to a legal fund, maybe separating off a separate

legal fund that just sits there until it's needed. But none of this can happen. Right. If we don't have volume. We just need people out there buying the token who believe in what we're doing. And we're not a quick flip. We're not going to make you money in two weeks or two months. We'll make you money in two years.

but that's the kind of the people who a lot of people getting into this crypto space today see the quick money that people are making and that's their anticipation and that shouldn't be the anticipation that should not be the anticipation well everything everything legitimate takes time yeah well especially to the point we're saying before if you're one of those people out there nodding along going yeah you know this i don't agree with the direction that's going you know that's the point that's what this is the effort to not do that right let's bring it back to where it's not some you know pump and dump immediate exchange to put rather an effort to put your money into something that will eventually grow into something that benefits others. You know, so if you're out there wanting to donate, take a moment, send a dollar, you know, go or whatever, you know, take some small. I mean, right now, what's the price at right now? I imagine. Right. Okay.

So you can pick up a ton. It's about, let me see, 0.0054 and has a billion tokens. Market cap is about 55,000, right? So for a billion tokens, the total value is about $55,000. So it's a perfect time to go out there. Oh, my God. Take a couple dollars and you get a million tokens or whatever that amounts to. You know, they get a ton of tokens.

And then you can hold on to that and that money then helps this project. And, you know, and right there, the point is about not doing that to try to exchange that out the next week for money, but to just let that build and grow over time and hopefully become something we all benefit from. You know, that's the idea. Yeah. And so it's like it comes back to the marketing. And well, not even, I don't want to use the word marketing. I want to say making people aware because I have a feeling this better ways to, this right here is a better way of making people aware than going to spend $1,000 on some Twitter ads.

Like 100%. So moving forward into the future, this is how we plan on doing things, connecting to people who have the ability to get it in front of their audience. That, I think, is the number one way to grow this thing because all of these marketing mechanisms in crypto are, they're just not effective. They're not effective for what we're doing. Yeah. And as you mentioned, in more than one area, very dishonest, manipulated. Yeah. The whole space is so manipulated.

Yeah. I mean, even how we just talked about the over-the-counter stuff and the market, and that's manipulation right there. You know, all these guys buying all those Bitcoins, we should have a million dollar Bitcoin today, but we don't. Right, right. And that's how they're going to manipulate the market to when they, to where the price that they wanted at.

Right. Right. Exactly. Well, so for all the people out there that are, you know, rightly skeptical of anything, I mean, at this point, anything technological, it seems like anything. I know. Which, I mean, trust me, I get it. Like, it is in some cases, it can be a little bit, you know,

overreaction, but I completely understand the concern. But so for those out there that are of the mind that everything crypto is bad or, you know, whatever else, or more of the middle ground, they're just very skeptical of anything in this field. And we've already pretty much gone through most of it. But any other, you know, any thoughts or perspectives to give around, you know, why to assay, you know, to remove those concerns? Yeah.

Well, first off, just the fact that I'm sitting here talking about it is, should tell you that I have personal confidence in it. I've been in independent media for over 10 years. I have two books out, documentaries. I'm not willing to take my reputation and throw it away over some stupid crypto, period. This to me is the culmination of everything I've done in my life, the combination of my work in crypto and independent media and everything. And there's not, there are no other projects out there that you can talk to anybody who's

going to give you a speech like that. I agree. So. Yeah. I agree. Well, you know, I definitely think that there's a, a major place for this. I think there's an obvious need for people in this field to have, you know, just any leg up in this situation, you know, whether it's because being sued or suppressed

or censored or financially, you know, debanks, you know, it's just, it's just everywhere you look right now. As you said, people in this field, you know, like, look, I feel, I feel blessed and lucky to have a level of success in this field that few have. And even then, I'm one bad month away from this basically going away. You know, that's, oh, yeah, you are. You know, it's like, and it's just insane that that's that's that's with being like i make this comparison like during coven 19 for example you know we're bringing people on doing interviews that are you know the three weeks later on tucker carlson you know it's like we're at the same level of this conversation and yet dramatically less in regard to what we you know the revenue that comes in right basic return from

doing what we believe in not because of the return but because we believe in it it hopes that doing the right thing for the right reasons will have that return you know but it's like there's a clear space for this to fill, to help support people that need that and are being attacked. So I really appreciate this direction. And I hope people will take the time to look into it, like you're saying, and I just dismiss it because it's crypto or blindly accept it because it's us, right? Look into it. Look at the information that will include and go through it for yourself and be skeptical, right? That's what question everything. That's important. And then realize for yourself that it's a project that has intentions that are meant to support

this platform or rather, you know, this field. So one thing I need one thing I don't think people really comprehend is that in the independent media space, which is where all the people who are listening to this, get all their information from, I know a ton of people in this space. And I'd say the vast majority of them struggle to make ends meet. A huge chunk of them have regular jobs. You know what I mean? But people have this sense that since you're doing a show like this, you have a nice studio, that you're making all kinds of money. Oh, my God. That is not the case. Everyone doing this is broke and struggling and being suppressed in multiple ways. And even though independent media has a hundred times the audience of what we call mainstream media today, the money hasn't balanced out.

It has. So for some people it has. There are some people who know how to really work the system and squeeze every dollar out of it. But that's not the vast majority of us who really, I'm a researcher. If I didn't have to do anything except read my books all day, that's what I would do. but I can't do that. The only reason I have a career at all is because I have to, right? Like, I'm a nerd.

I just like read it. So, but I can't do that. And neither can anybody else in the space. And so this is a, this is a chance to really help us grow independent media, one show at a time, you know? Yeah. And on top of that, you know, there are projects that in, in, you know,

in an honest world, whether, you know, even in the case of like music or art, you know, that should be seen and grown and, you know, proliferate, just because they're good, because they're talented, you know, in this case, because the project makes sense and it helps. But the reality is that's just not the way it works, right? It's very, right. This is the, an effort to help grow in that direction, you know, and I really do think and like my point is projects that may otherwise probably never would have seen the light of day, you know, a documentary about something that nobody wants people to know about. You know, it's like, this is an avenue to help those things be seen. Yeah. That's super important today.

I really do. So, yeah, we're really excited about it. Um, it's, an emotional gut-wrenching journey, though. I mean, because honestly, me and my partner on this thing, we basically put all the money we have on a world into this. And that this fails, there went my retirement money that I spent. You know what I mean? So it's, we're all on, we're all in on this thing. And I'll be sitting, I'll be here in five years doing another episode with you on how we're successful we've been. Yes, I hope. I hope so, man. You know, and that's the thing again, you know, that's an example of, you know, you're putting your money where your mouth is literally. You know, you're putting it there because you believe in the project.

And, you know, you rarely find that with the billionaire backers of whatever, you know, the multifaceted rug pulling things we talked about earlier. You know, since definitely something I hope to see grow, hope to see, you know, help other independent media that are in similar situations. You know, it's just, it's everywhere you look right now, the censorship, especially as we enter into the kind of AI control structures that are being built. And, you know, that's just going to make it increasingly more difficult for people in this field to get their information out. to have people to find them to even donate it the first place.

Like, you know, it's going to get more and more intense, you know, so we need more projects like this. So I really do value what you're doing, man. And I, right, we're here with you. And I hope this succeeds and we'll be talking about it more as it go forward. Yeah. Anything else you want to to talk about before we leave or any upcoming things you want to drop? No, we pretty much covered everything.

I just want everyone to know our first distributions will start September 1st. Ryan's going to get our first distribution. We're doing a million tokens to 25 different shows. we still have room for five or six shows to pick up. We're still looking over the next couple months for five or six shows to receive tokens in the first distribution. So get a hold of me, get a hold of Ryan, just somehow get a hold of us and we'll talk to you and we'll see what we can do. Yeah. So if you're out there and you want to be a part of it, reach out and, you know, don't probably emailing me is probably the worst thing you can do.

So lost in my spam folders, but give it a shot or email both of us. But overall, the point is that this is something you could still be involved. with, if you support it. And again, not because you're going to make money, right? At least right in the immediate moment is because you believe in this and you want to help support that and raise awareness around it, you know? So I don't think we're going to personally make any money off this for a couple of years. No, yeah. I mean, again, hopefully it does happen, but the point is, maybe if ever, you know, like the reality is, this is a risky shot because we believe in what the point is, you know, but I, you know, I believe it, man. I believe that we are in a time right now

where, I mean, maybe it's been like this for a long time and people just don't see it until now, but that more people than I've ever seen doing this in my entire life are questioning things they never have before, are ready to see something new or thirsty for good intentioned honest projects. I really think this is a prime moment for this, and I think it's going to succeed too. So I'm looking so do I. Well, it's good talking with you, brother, and I'm looking forward to the follow-up where we can talk about it again. Yes, Ryan, thank you for having me on. I appreciate it.

I applaud your brother. And as always, everybody out there, question everything. Come to your own conclusions. Stay vigilant.